Overdose of Poetry

Somehow Thumboo's poetry doesn't seem to be very appealing ... it is just too particular. Supposedly the best literary works start from the particular and transcend to the universal. Chinese has a very apt expression for this: 浅入深出. But the particular in this case just seems to overwhelm everything, a huge surrounding sea of names and details that don't particularly connect ... Or maybe I just don't get enough of the references.
Also, Pushkin goes down more smoothly in the English translation than in the Chinese.